Vincent Berquez: Picasso’s bicycle

Picasso’s bicycle

The clutter was busy with itself,
dusty, rusty bits of calloused iron
struggled in the dinosaur maxim
of becoming dead skeletons
at the end of a so-so utilitarian life.

The effeminate ballroom
was not far behind, peeling
paint and whimpering plaster
on stained alabaster flooring,
the dream of luxury expiring.

The ghost of a danced waltz
in a Fin de Siècle stench spewed
to the vibration of tuneless strings.
Cobweb filled champagne bottles
sipped by drunk working class guests,
parched their sandy mouths thirsty.

The dirt filled the building slowly
travelling illegally on the back
of the Sirocco from the Levant
to leave an arid skin on every surface.

The walls bleached and blistered,
the fascias cracked and crumbled,
the Republic surrendered easily
to the upstart Spaniard’s charms
and chivvied slices of glory for him
in the ruined hypocrisy of its noblesse.

His work attested to a fall in standards
in slices of past glory, all ideas stolen
by the old devil’s goat-like desires.

The scrapyard sniggered in contempt
at the old fool, and the camera stared.

03.02.11

Vincent Berquez

Vincent Berquez is a London–based artist and poet

fleursdumal.nl magazine

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